WESTON, Thomas (1609-88)

One of the younger sons of the earl of Portland, like his sisters Thomas Weston appears to have been raised a Catholic by their mother’s auspices and he was noted later in life as being ‘a religious man’. Verney ms mic. M636/21, Lady A. Hobart to Sir R. Verney, 4 July 1667. He served as an officer in the royalist army in the Civil War, seeing action with his brother Nicholas and with George Goring^‡, styled Lord Goring, at the siege of Portsmouth. He was later captured at the battle of Rowton Heath in 1645. After the king’s defeat Weston appears to have opted for exile. He may have been in Rouen in 1649 and at some point in the early 1650s was boarding at the convent of St Monica at Louvain where his sister, Lady Mary Weston, also lived. HMC 7th Rep. 357; The Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers ed J. Morris, 309–10.

The death of his nephew Charles Weston* , 3rd earl of Portland, at the battle of Lowestoft brought the peerage to Weston in the summer of 1665, but he appears to have been reluctant to shoulder the responsibility. Noted as missing at a call on 1 Oct. 1666, he left it to the following year before finally taking his seat in the House. Present for the first time on 10 Oct. 1667, the following day he was named to the committees for privileges and petitions. He was named to a further five committees in the course of the session, of which he attended 62 per cent of all sitting days. Never a very active member of the House, Portland sat for the last time on 1 Mar. 1669. Two months later, he suffered the loss of his countess, who appears to have been in poor health from the outset of their marriage. Add. 75355, letter 7, Clifford of Lanesborough to Burlington, 20 July 1667. Although by her death he benefited from an inheritance of £2,500 and the residue of her estate, he was also encumbered with the executorship of both her will and that of her former husband, which she had failed to settle fully by the time of her death. TNA, PROB 11/330.

Portland had sold his paternal inheritance, the estate at Skreens, prior to the Civil War and, according to his Wadham contemporary Sir John Bramston^‡, ‘having little to support his title’, after the death of his countess he opted once more for life abroad. Bramston Autobiog. 102n. He was noted as abroad at calls of the House on 21 Feb. and 14 Nov. 1670 and at several subsequent calls. Portland was dismissed by Antony Ashley Cooper, earl of Shaftesbury, as ‘doubly vile’ (and a papist) in an assessment of May 1677. Two years later Thomas Osborne, earl of Danby (later duke of Leeds), thought him doubtful in an analysis of likely supporters (though he also described Portland mistakenly as a minor). By 1683 Portland appears to have settled permanently at Louvain, boarding once again at the convent of St Monica, where Bramston mistakenly believed that his sister and fellow boarder, Lady Mary Weston, was a nun. Ibid. 102–3. The king sent him a bounty of £100 at Christmas 1687.

Portland continued to feature in occasional forecasts, being noted as a Catholic in lists of those peers thought likely to support repeal of the Test in January and November 1687 and again in January 1688. He died later that year without leaving a will. He was described in the convent’s chronicle as having been ‘a singular benefactor and dear friend to this monastery’. Chronicle of the English Augustinian Canonesses Regular of the Lateran at St Monica’s in Louvain ed. A. Hamilton, 150–1. At his death the peerage became extinct, but the title was revived early the following year for William III’s favourite, Hans Willem Bentinck, who was created earl of Portland of the second creation.